Vie de l'innommable
by PageJustice
Summary: If you asked her, she would lie.
1. Prologue

Prologue

If you asked her, she would lie.

She would invent a story, maybe even recite one she'd read in a book before. She was loath to tell the truth—and you would have to be either highly trained in torturous activities or exceedingly persuasive to get her to confide even the smallest detail.

Her past was all but impossible to discern. She was the only one to ask—no one else knew of it, except, obviously, her employer. She supposed that it all stemmed from him, in a way. Her reasoning for working with him—it wasn't so much that she owed him a favor or (she shudders) her life, but more for her own personal satisfaction. You'd be hard pressed to know the truth behind that motivation as well.

But to understand why she ended where she is, texting in the backseat of a discreet black car next to an invalidated army doctor, you have to understand _how._


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

_Paris, 1987_

The crowds of the market place were slithering with activity.

Merchants shouted at one another while women shouted at shopkeepers while children scurried around ankles. Smoke from a bakery was spilling out into the streets, and old men selling meat shouted prices to elbowing wives and husbands.

She didn't remember much about this moment, but she remembered enough to know it was important. The sky was dark with threatening rain, and she could smell wood smoke above the sharp stink of raw meats. The people in the crowd were a wash of color in a gray afternoon, and she knew that she had to be quick if she didn't want to be caught.

There was a nudge at her back and she turned to meet the eyes of the oldest of them. Luca was his name. He nods towards the mass of the market and nudges her again.

"_Aller_," he whispers, smile cracking around the cigarette hanging from his lips. She knows, even at five years old, that he'd stolen it, like the rest of the group's possessions. She supposed that that was her goal today, as well. Steal.

Even at five years old, she understood the concept of pulling her own weight.

She darted into the crowd.

_Paris, 1992_

"And _then_, after they chased me through the station, I got caught sneaking through the back of a butcher's shop, and the next thing I know they've got me cuffed in a cell!"

They laughed, although she knew for a fact that most of their English was rather poor. She understood it—she had quite an ear for it, really—and the American sitting amongst their circle of friends seemed never ending in his stories. Most of them—maybe all of them, minus Luca—were at least half-listening.

At ten years old, she had earned a rank in the group of kids. There was never a constant number, she'd learned—everyone was always coming and going, dying or being arrested. Placed into orphanages. She'd never heard of any of the homeless children being adopted into a normal, happy life.

Until the American came.

He was around sixteen, cocky, blonde. His name had been Jason or Jackson or James and he'd come into the group with nothing but his clothes and a smile—and, he failed to mention, a warrant of arrest suspended over his head. So when police burst through the door of the abandoned building and grabbed him into custody (not even fifteen minutes after he finished the story about the butcher's shop), she had reacted in the only way she'd known how.

_Run_!

She made it to middle of a group of tourists hovering around the l'Arc de Triumph before she glanced behind her. Police were crawling through the streets, looking lost, and she stuck close to the heels of strangers. She hid her face in her hair and hoped that perhaps some of the others had gotten away. Perhaps they would come look for her; Paris was a big place for such a small girl.

She was thinking these to herself when she bumped into the back of a woman.

She almost managed to flee before she alerted the woman to her presence, but the crowd behind her was choked and suffocating and packed.

The woman turned and spotted her. Took in the clothes, the hair, the face, everything about the girl, until she felt as if she was an exposed and live, sparking wire. The woman's eyes softened and she reached a hand out to—

_"Elle est la!"_

Her arm was grabbed and yanked, and the woman let out a startled breath when the girl winced. Her wince lasted a second before she twisted out of the grasp and slammed both fists into the officer's knee cap.

He growled and grabbed for her again. A crowd was gathering now, and she took hasty steps back only to be stopped by a body and a steadying hand on her shoulder.

"Is there a problem, sir?"

The voice was cool and motherly, and the girl looked up to the same woman. She looked expensive, high-class, severe. The girl took pleasure in knowing the police man didn't stand a chance against this woman.

"_Est-ce que votre enfant_?" Is this your child?

"_Qui, monsieur_," she flashed him a pleasant smile. "Is there something the matter here?"

After the police had gone, the woman removed her hand and sunk to face her directly, kneeling in front of the ten year-old with a world weary smile. The girl met her eyes before glancing away to track the approach of a man that could possibly belong to the woman in front of her.

"You don't have a family, do you?"

She shook her head. No, she doesn't.

"Would you like one?"

_London, 1994_

She'd explained everything about her decade of existence to Charlotte and Jonathan Belmore.

After the adoption and the relocation, she'd explained her love of books, of knowledge, of fighting, of mysteries. She's explained that she had no name—that she had been called Fox, because she was quick in crowds, and she'd never even knew her real parents.

They had let her decide on a name. She was twelve years old, and she was independent, said Charlotte. John agreed.

She decided on Anthea. Anthea Belmore.

Even growing up without the advantage of formal education, she managed to pass the level of others her age. She had a passion for reading that she hadn't known she possessed until she'd been introduced to the Belmore's expansive library.

Charlotte and John had kindly provided the funding for her self-defense classes, since Anthea was set on precautions and Charlotte never really forgot the moment in Paris when Anthea had been caught by the police. The Belmore's had a fair amount of money to their name, and they used it grandly on their adopted daughter.

Anthea had never loved, or been loved, by people who were as good as the Belmore's. The memory of her life with them was so far ingrained in her mind that she doubted that she would ever truly change that opinion.

_Belmore Estate, London, 1999_

She was seventeen.

The day before had been weeping skies and flooded gardens, and the knight didn't appear to be any different. It was fitting, she supposed, thinking back, that it had been raining.

Before that night, she'd loved the rain.

There had been a sound of glass breaking from the floor below, where her parents' bedroom was. It had woken her up—she was a light sleeper—and the shadows swimming through her room invited her out of bed to see what happened. She loved mysteries, after all.

Anthea shut her door behind her as she crept down the staircase in night clothes. What little light there was outside guided her path to the rooms below and she stopped on the last step to listen.

There was a heart-stopping, gut-twisting scream.

Anthea ran.

Bare feet slid on carpets and she rounded a corner to come face-to-face with her parents' bedroom. The door was cracked, and there was the steady, heavy sound of silence from within. The sickening silence that comes after a storm.

Or was that before? She couldn't remember.

She hesitated only a second before she pushed the door open and entered.

She can't exactly remember what happened after.

She vomited. She's sure of that.

Her eyes had watered from the smell of copper and the tang of blood.

She had cried, because she is human.

Anthea had to blink the tears out of her eyes before she saw the note.

_Tu nous appartiens_.

You belong to us.

And she knew who did this, immediatly. She knew who'd murdered them. Killed her parents, her saviors, her heroes.

She packed practical clothes, one's that would blend her into a crowd and wouldn't provide weight in case of a struggle. She had a collection of knives she was rather fond of. She packed those.

She took the credit cards that her parents had stashed in their wallets. She went back to their room to string their wedding rings through the necklace and fasten it around her neck. Sentiment, she knew, but required. Motivation. A reminder.

Anthea stopped by the front doors of the Belmore house, surveying. She had a suitcase beside her, her coat buttoned and her hair pulled back. She grabbed an umbrella off of the coat rack her before turning out into the rain.

The chef would find the bodies in the morning, and Anthea knew she'd be the main suspect, seeing as she wasn't present. She'd let the police deal with their own deductions.

She had to get to Paris.

_Tu nous appartiens_.


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

_2__nd__ December 1999, London_

"How much would it cost to make you remember?"

"I told you, girl, I—"

Anthea sighed, tucked the money back into her pocket. "How much," she asked again, "will it cost?"

This time, it wasn't notes she held in her hand, but a gun. She cocked it and aimed it between his eyes, which widened marginally.

"He was about a head taller than you, an' he 'ad blood all over him. That's all I remember, swear on my life!" The homeless man took a frantic step back, only to meet the wall of the building.

"Hmm, yes, I supposed you would be swearing on your life." She smiled before slipping the gun back into her jacket (best not to be seen swinging a gun around) and turning away.

Anthea stuffed her hands into her pockets before crossing the street to the nearest vendor. He was selling newspapers and magazines and such, and she asked him (without the threat of a gun) if he'd seen anyone around matching the description of the man that homeless waste of air had given.

He hadn't.

London was a big city, but it wasn't the city she needed.

News headlines were blaring about the double homicide of the Belmore couple, and the strange disappearance of their seventeen year old daughter. The police reported no sign of a struggle in her room, and they'd assumed she was either kidnapped or involved.

Either way, she knew she wasn't getting onto a plane any time soon. And consequentially, she wasn't getting to Paris.

This, she figured, was going to be a problem.

Anthea was holed up in a small hotel, shifting through fake ideas she'd had commissioned in the few days on her own. Her parent's credit cards were still activated, and she'd have to make one last stop to a specialist that made the highest quality passports before she could figure out how to by-pass security in the airport.

The streets were cold, and shops were stringing Christmas lights and decorating windows and doors. Some of the more good-willed people—and, Anthea thought, completely inane—braved the cold and rang bells at passerbyers to donate. She narrowly avoided being hit by a cheery old woman with minor obesity.

She was halfway to her destination when her thoughts were interrupted by the shrill ringing coming from inside a phone box.

She ignored it and kept walking.

Phones close to her kept ringing.

After the fourth time, she stopped to shut herself into the nearest booth and answer.

"Hello?"

"Good evening, Miss Belmore."

The voice was cool and smooth, suggesting without words that hanging up would guarantee a rather unpleasant consequence. Anthea didn't hang up. Her curiosity always did get the best of her.

"It is, thank you, sir. Can I help you?" She did have manners, after all.

"Yes, I believe you can. You see, we have a common enemy, and I would very much like to assist you in…disposing of them."

"At what price?" Because she knew quite a lot about paying what was owed.

"At the price of cleansing Paris of its most dangerous organization. They've become a threat to nation security, as of recently, and their power needs to be handled."

Anthea narrowed her eyes, scuffing her boot off the ground. "Why do you want me, specifically, to help you?"

"Miss Belmore, I am to understand that you grew up as an orphan in Paris, correct?" The voice didn't wait for her to answer. "You were a part of this organization when it began—a group of children stealing from unsuspecting pedestrians. They've grown since you left, Miss Belmore, and they've gained quite the…unsavory sponsor. They're now threatening to smuggle illegal paraphernalia into major cities and distribute it to government-opposing affiliations."

"Sir…" Anthea pinched the bridge of her nose. She didn't care about the government! She couldn't afford to get sidetracked when she already had a goal in mind. "I believe they want me to rejoin their ranks, and I'm on my way to infiltrating and…it doesn't matter. I already have a mission, and I'm afraid I can't help you."

There was a smile in his voice when he answered. "Oh, I understand you have your own agenda. I'm simply suggesting I supply you the resources to make your success a possibility."

She huffed a breath. "Are you suggesting I couldn't succeed without your help?"

"You are suspected of the murder of your parents, the credit cards you're using have been tracked back to the hotel you're currently occupying, and you have one firearm that you stole from an unsuspecting police officer. I wouldn't say you are in the ideal place to successfully dismantle the largest crime enterprise in Paris."

"Shit," she muttered. The voice had a point, and if it what he said was true…

"I'm afraid I need an answer now, Miss Belmore."

"Fine, fine! I'll do it." Anthea snapped, glancing down at her watch. She'd missed her appointment with the man providing her a passport. "But I'll need a few things."

"Of course, of course. There's a car waiting to take you to a new location; supplies will be inside. What name would you like on your legal documents?"

Anthea blinked. "Doesn't matter, you pick. And if I can ask…who is this?"

There was a chuckle from the other end of the line before it went dead.

There had been a car, and inside had been her belongings from the hotel.

She breathed a sigh of relief at the bag of "supplies" that the Voice had left. Another gun, this one with clips of tranquilizers instead of bullets; three different credit cards issued to Alexandria Smith, Andrea Jones, and Annie Wishaw; a stack of notes, and a manila folder packed with papers and profiles of prominent members of the organization she was supposed to be taking down.

In the very bottom of the bag, a mobile phone was ringing.

She held it to her ear with trepidation.

"I hope you find everything to be satisfactory. And before you go about with your plan, I have a small request, concerning the profiles in the folder in front of you."

The voice again, cool as ice.

"Does it have anything to do with the tranquilizer gun?"

"Very observant of you," he said, voice dry (she knew sarcasm when she heard it). "I'll need you to incapacitate a few senior officers, but I want them alive. I'll have a retrieval team waiting to pick them up after you tranquilize them."

"This report…" Anthea scanned the page, catching a few words that stood out. "They're called the "Web". Why an English name? I thought they were a French gang?"

"They are quite French, I can assure you, Miss Belmore—"

"Anthea."

"—but it seems their sponsor is quite fond of the English language. The fancy their influence…spreading, like a spider's web."

Anthea nodded crisply, as if the man on the other end could see her. "Right. Do I have to go disguised to the airport or will security men turn away as I walk past?" Because she was anything but naïve, and this man on the phone had power.

And he was laughing at her. "I'm afraid I don't hold that much influence yet, my dear, so you will require a disguise."

The car pulled to the curb, and Anthea glanced out the tinted to the hotel in front of her—a lot nicer than the one she'd been staying at. She put the phone back to her ear to say something—maybe a term of gratitude or a chastisement that she didn't need charity—but the line was already dead.

"Bastard," she muttered, grabbing her bags and heading out into the cold air of London.


End file.
